If you were to think of players who have a consistent record of driving sales in the baseball card market over the past 10 years, Derek Jeter would be one of the first names that would come to mind. A popular player on the most widely followed team in baseball, Jeter has a large collector following in the hobby.

A card featuring a game-used uniform swatch of Jeter sounds like a card that would make any collector happy. Just imagine what something like that might be worth.

Well, just to see what something like that might be worth, I logged onto eBay and looked up some recent results. Surely, I’d find some $500 and $600 sales.
Actually, I found one for six and a quarter.

That’s $6.25, not $625.

Wow, someone got quite the deal there. Guess I missed the boat. But upon closer look, there were several examples of Jeter game-used jersey and bat cards that sold for $10 or less. And he’s not alone. Albert Pujols jersey cards could also be found for $5 or less. Manny Ramirez game-used jersey cards for $2?

Granted, there are some examples of game-used cards from these players that sold for much more than pocket change, but the fact some could be found at bargain prices really screws up the average value for any cards of these players, let alone those players who aren't nearly as well known.

The point of all of this is that card companies are receiving some criticism for not putting enough perceived value in their new card products, particularly the high-end releases. The theory goes that if someone spends $100 on a pack of cards, they should be able to find at least $101 worth of stuff in that pack.

To meet that goal, card companies have to find new ways to create cards with the most potential value for those products. That usually means cut signature cards of deceased Hall of Famers, rare 1-of-1 cards and game-used items from today’s biggest starts.

But how does a card company have any chance of meeting a customer’s expectations when game-used cards from today’s hottest stars can be found for a fraction of what some of those packs cost to begin with?

The card companies are caught in the middle of a cost vs. value equation that is making it harder for them to make the majority of customers happy. It isn’t getting any cheaper to buy game-used items and autographs from the likes of Jeter, Pujols, Ramirez or any of the other top names in the sports world. But for every game-used or autographed card produced of those players, the supply in the marketplace increases. The more common it becomes, the less it’s worth.

As more cards from that given player reaches the secondary market, values diminish. Now when "Card Company A" tries to develop a content plan for its next card release, it becomes harder to find the recipe for content that will satisfy that “give us something worth more than we paid for it” command put forth by collectors.

Some will argue the card companies have painted themselves into this corner, but collectors are as much to blame. Collectors long ago put a higher emphasis on buying products that offered the better chance of a limited-edition insert card because those products offered the best bet to pull a card with resale value. Card companies have catered to those buyers because of simple math – namely, there’s a lot fewer expenses involved in producing a single pack that can be sold for $100 than producing 50 packs that can be sold for $2 each.

But if card companies are going to continue to cater to the higher-end collectors, they’re going to have to find new ways to motivate them to make a purchase. Memorabilia and autograph cards are still the most popular items found within packs, but it’s getting harder to create cards that are all that different from anything that's been on the market before.